On accents, colloquialisms and proprietary extensions

I may not be the most “travelled” person in the world, but over the past couple of years I have managed to find myself in several places across Asia, the Pacific Islands and also the US. One thing has always stood out – Speaking the same language is the hardest part of travelling! Now when I travel to parts of Asia and Im dealing either in hand gestures or with somebody trying their very best speak English (Their English is 1000x better than my Cantonese or my Khmer), and we both make allowances for the difficulty of not speaking the same language.

Sadly, when I travel to the United States and we both attempt to speak “English” nobody can ever seem to understand me. Sometimes its my accent, and other times its the colloquialisms I am using that do not translate effectively, and I am treated by blank stares on the other person trying their hardest not to say “Huh?”.

I’ve learned to deal with this by talking slower and thinking carefully about the words I use to ensure that they dont have some local significance. Anybody who has met me in person knows that I talk loudly, quickly Continue reading

CCIE Lab Exam attempt #2 – How I’m going to study better!

Well it has been just over 7 weeks now since I failed my first attempt at the CCIE Lab Exam in Routing & Switching in Brussels. On the way home on the Eurostar I had vowed to take the weekend off and get straight back on the horse and start labbing again for 4 hours […]

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Roger Perkin

Roger Perkin is the Senior Network Engineer for the European Data Center team for Cobham. Based in Hampshire in the UK, when not designing, building and troubleshooting networks, he can be found studying for his CCIE, kite surfing, cycling and spending time with his family.
You can follow his progress on his CCIE Blog or follow him on Twitter @rogernperkin
or on Google Plus

The post CCIE Lab Exam attempt #2 – How I’m going to study better! appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Roger Perkin.

5 Reasons to Consider Working For a Technology Reseller

For the first several years of my career, I worked for a smaller technology reseller. These types of organizations are often known as value added resellers, or VARs. The role of a VAR is to combine their expertise with some technology they sell in a way that solves the challenges of their customers. The expertise […]

Author information

Paul Stewart

Paul is a Network and Security Engineer, Trainer and Blogger who enjoys understanding how things really work. With nearly 15 years of experience in the technology industry, Paul has helped many organizations build, maintain and secure their networks and systems. Paul also writes technical content at PacketU.

The post 5 Reasons to Consider Working For a Technology Reseller appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Paul Stewart.

NX-OS vPC FEX configuration example


Here's a no frills cheat sheet for a quick vPC and FEX configuration on a pair of Nexus 5000 switches. Refer visio for switch connectivity.



Note, my management network is a /29, just in case you want to configure config-sync between the two NX5K switches. You will need a cfs mcast-address which could be the same as the default gateway used in the management vrf.

On NX5K-1

int mgmt0
 ip add 1.1.1.2/29

vrf context management
 ip route 0.0.0.0/0 1.1.1.1

int eth1/1-2
 desc vPC Peer-Link members
 channel-group 1 mode active

int po1
 desc vPC Peer-Link
 vpc peer-link
 switchport mode trunk
 sw trunk allowed vlan list
 spanning-tree port type network

vpc domain 100
 peer-switch
 role priority 4096
 system priority 4096
 peer-keepalive destination 1.1.1.3 source 1.1.1.2 vrf management

fex 100
 desc "FEX 100"
 pinning max-links 1

fex 101
 desc "FEX 101"
 pinning max-links 1

int eth1/9-10
 channel-group 100

int eth1/11-12
 channel-group 101

int po100
 switchport mode fex-fabric
 fex associate 100
 vpc 100

int po101
 switchport mode fex-fabric
 fex associate 101
 vpc 101

On NX5K-2

int mgmt0
 ip add 1.1.1.3/29

vrf context management
 ip route 0. Continue reading

Powerless Words and Technology

I was introduced by a colleague and mentor a few years ago to the concept of powerless words. Words like “try”, “but”, and “maybe/might”, among others, seem to be our mind’s way of protecting itself against the unknown. After all, we’re only human, right? We can’t control what the world throws at us, right? I encourage you to read the article I linked to as well as this one, which the first article refers to.

Cisco UCS Port-Channeling

Cisco UCS offers a few policies that are applied globally to all equipment in a given UCS domain. These policies are found by selecting the “Equipment” node under the “equipment” tab. (You can also change on an individual chassis basis but the default behavior is for all chassis to inherit this global policy) This is specifically referring to the connectivity between the Fabric Interconnects and the Chassis FEX modules or I/O modules (IOM).

Powerless Words and Technology

I was introduced by a colleague and mentor a few years ago to the concept of powerless words. Words like “try”, “but”, and “maybe/might”, among others, seem to be our mind’s way of protecting itself against the unknown. After all, we’re only human, right? We can’t control what the world throws at us, right? I encourage you to read the article I linked to as well as this one, which the first article refers to.

Cisco UCS Port-Channeling

Cisco UCS offers a few policies that are applied globally to all equipment in a given UCS domain. These policies are found by selecting the “Equipment” node under the “equipment” tab. (You can also change on an individual chassis basis but the default behavior is for all chassis to inherit this global policy) This is specifically referring to the connectivity between the Fabric Interconnects and the Chassis FEX modules or I/O modules (IOM).

RFC 3330 Filtering Using Network Objects

RFC3330 Special-User IPv4 Addresses

Below is a list of special use IPv4 address assigned by IANA and should be blocked inbound on external connections. Most security administrators block RFC1918 but do not realize that RFC3330 includes special use addresses that should not be traversing the internet. RFC3330 includes addresses referenced in multiple RFC's including RFC1918.

   Address Block             Present Use      
   --------------------------------------------------
   0.0.0.0/8            "This" Network              
   10.0.0.0/8           Private-Use Networks                  
   14.0.0.0/8           Public-Data Networks        
   24.0.0.0/8           Cable Television Networks                
   39.0.0.0/8           Reserved but subject to allocation                              
   127.0.0.0/8          Loopback                      
  Continue reading

[Code] UltimateUCSBuild

Name: UltimateUCSBuild.ps1 Author: Matthew Oswalt Created: 6/10/2013 Current Version: v0.2 (ALPHA) Revision Date: 6/18/2013 Description: –THIS SCRIPT IS VERY NEW, EXPECT FREQUENT CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS– A script that starts with a completely blank UCS system and configures it to completion. This version of the script is very non-modular and static, but that will change in future versions. My long-term vision for this script is to be simple, yet powerful. I want it to have the ability to provision lots of stuff very quickly, with minimal code changes.

Why We Want to Kill Spanning Tree

To say that Ethernet as a L2 protocol is well-known is an understatement - it’s in every PC network card, and every network closet. Back during the inception of Ethernet, the world needed an open, efficient, standardized method of communicating between nodes on a LAN. Widely regarded as the “mother of the Internet” for many reasons - not the least of which is the invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol - Radia Perlman equated the wide proliferation of Ethernet to the same events that have made English such as popular language on Earth.

[Code] UltimateUCSBuild

Name: UltimateUCSBuild.ps1 Author: Matthew Oswalt Created: 6/10/2013 Current Version: v0.2 (ALPHA) Revision Date: 6/18/2013 Description: –THIS SCRIPT IS VERY NEW, EXPECT FREQUENT CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS– A script that starts with a completely blank UCS system and configures it to completion. This version of the script is very non-modular and static, but that will change in future versions. My long-term vision for this script is to be simple, yet powerful. I want it to have the ability to provision lots of stuff very quickly, with minimal code changes.

Why We Want to Kill Spanning Tree

To say that Ethernet as a L2 protocol is well-known is an understatement - it’s in every PC network card, and every network closet. Back during the inception of Ethernet, the world needed an open, efficient, standardized method of communicating between nodes on a LAN. Widely regarded as the “mother of the Internet” for many reasons - not the least of which is the invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol - Radia Perlman equated the wide proliferation of Ethernet to the same events that have made English such as popular language on Earth.

DCI: Using FabricPath for Interconnecting Data Centers

Here's a topic that comes up more and more now that FabricPath is getting more exposure and people are getting more familiar with the technology: Can FabricPath be used to interconnecting data centers?

For a primer on FabricPath, see my pervious article Five Functional Facts about FabricPath
.

FabricPath has some characteristics that make it appealing for DCI. Namely, it extends Layer 2 domains while maintaining Layer 3 — ie, routing — semantics. End host MAC addresses are learned via a control plane, FP frames contain a Time To Live (TTL) field which purge looping packets from the network, and there are no such thing as blocked links — all links are forwarding and Equal Cost Multi-Pathing (ECMP) is used within the fabric. In addition, since FabricPath does not mandate a particular physical network topology, it can be used in spine/leaf architectures within the data center or point-to-point connections between data centers.

Sounds great. Now what are the caveats?

PQ Show 24 – Cisco OTV Deep Dive Part 1

New voices gather in the Packet Pushers virtual boardroom for a discussion of Cisco’s layer 2 extension technology, Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV). Ethan Banks hosts a recording of about two hours worth of content about OTV; this show is the first hour. Joining Ethan are first-time guests Jamie Caesar, Colby Glass and Ken Matlock. Jamie, […]

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Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
TwitterGoogle+LinkedIn

The post PQ Show 24 – Cisco OTV Deep Dive Part 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Have Respect For The Work You Do

The other day I was called in to assist with issue that had been open for a few days. The primary reason for my involvement was to confirm network connectivity was permitted as required by a recently installed application. After an initial look, it was apparent that the application wasn’t even trying to access network […]

Author information

Paul Stewart

Paul is a Network and Security Engineer, Trainer and Blogger who enjoys understanding how things really work. With nearly 15 years of experience in the technology industry, Paul has helped many organizations build, maintain and secure their networks and systems. Paul also writes technical content at PacketU.

The post Have Respect For The Work You Do appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Paul Stewart.

Are Forensics Tools the New IDS?

For the past few years, many people have been suggesting that the days of IDS (intrusion detection system) are numbered. When IDS was first launched, it was seen as an answer to a lot of network security problems: deep packet inspection with constant monitoring and alerts. However, one of the biggest problems with IDS is […]

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Darragh Delaney

Technical Director at NetFort

Darragh Delaney is head of technical services at NetFort. As Director of Technical Services and Customer Support, he interacts on a daily basis with NetFort customers and is responsible for the delivery of a high quality technical and customer support service.

Darragh has extensive experience in the IT industry, having previously worked for O2 and Tyco. His User and Network Forensics blog. for Computer World focuses his experiences of network management and IT security in the real world. In his current role Darragh is regularly on site with network administrators and managers and this blog is a window into the real world of keeping networks running and data assets secure.

He shares network security and management best practices on the NetFort blog. Follow Darragh on Twitter @darraghdelaney and NetFort Technologies @netfort. You can also contact him Continue reading

Monitoring VRFs on IOS-XR

Lately I have been investigating how to monitor BGP peering session via SNMP instead of traps/syslog messages and I found out that this feature is not documented properly for IOS XR. Finally I managed to get it working, so I thought that it would be worth sharing with the community. In our example, we have […]

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David Barroso

David Barroso

Networking Engineer focused mainly in the DataCenter. As an engineer at a large ISP he has to deal with large multitenant networks, DataCenter Interconnections, large MSTP regions, BGP and all that stuff that's scary to normal people.

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dbarrosop
Twitter: @dbarrosop

The post Monitoring VRFs on IOS-XR appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by David Barroso.

Centec V330: My Kind of OpenFlow Switch

This is my third and probably last installment of an ongoing story about our quest for OpenFlow 1.0 capable switches with a specific requirement - the capability to modify L3 destination addresses. The background of why Sakura Internet needs such switches for the purpose of DDoS attack mitigation is explained in my first article, along with […]

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Tamihiro Yuzawa

Tamihiro Yuzawa

Tamihiro Yuzawa is a network engineer at Sakura Internet, one of Japan's major data center service providers. Before he joined Sakura in 2007, he spent five years at a busy CRM service provider. Both companies have allowed him to stay mostly within the intersection of these circles, and he is pretty much determined to remain in a serious relationship with both Dev and Ops.

The post Centec V330: My Kind of OpenFlow Switch appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Tamihiro Yuzawa.

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